The Lot Editor, or LE as I will be referring to it as, is a program made by MAXIS for the players of SC4 to add or edit lots in SC4 (SimCity 4). To download the LE (which is needed for this tutorial) please visit http://www.simcity.ea.com.

3. Step 1 /Creating a new lot /The "lot" Tab Now. to get to the good stuff. Open up the Lot Editor

Your Screen should look like this:

Select the lot you wish edit

We will work on a new park. Scroll down the list until you find Pz 1x1_Grass. Select it and push ok. Now you have opened up the open grass area lot. You notice you have a 3d view and a 2d view. Below the 3d view you have a set of tabs. In this step I will tell you about the Lot tab. It should already be selected. First we will change the size of our park lot. In the "size" box, enter 5 for both width and depth. Notice that every time you change something, you can view it in the 3D. Also in the lot tab are the foundation and elevation change boxes. In this lesson you won't need to use them, consult your LE manual for more information on those. Now select how you want the road to be on this lot. You can choose this from the "Corners" box, this isn't really important except for looks.

4. Step 2 Ground and Overlay Textures

Now onto making the base of your lot. First we will look at base textures. Select the "base textures" tab. Select Add Item. Cycle through the list until you find grass number 0x25f40000. Place the grass in each empty tile within the lot. You have just added the base texture and now we will move on to the overlay textures. Select the "Overlay Texture" tab. Your lot should be like this A B C D E 1 * * * * * 2 * * * * * 3 * * * * * 4 * * * * * 5 * * * * * * = grass base textures

We now are going to add a path using the overlay textures. Find path # 0x25933000 it's the dark straight one. Place it vertically in tiles d5 d4 b1 and b2 and rotate it once to make it horizontal and place it in tile c3 (for tile #'s refer to grid above) You should have something like this now: A B C D E 1 I 2 I 3 -- 4 I 5 I & I = pathway

Now to add turns. Find turn # 0x25963000 it's the dark turn. Select it and place it in tiles b3 and d3 you will need to rotate at least one of them. It should be like this now: A B C D E 1 I 2 I 3 '- -- -, 4 I 5 I '- & -, = Turns

Congrats you have just mastered the basics of lot making.. Continue farter into the tutorial to learn about props and other things.

5. Step 3 / Buildings and Props

Lets start off with buildings. You can't add buildings to a lot; I'll just say that now. A building appears as a grey rectangle on the 2d view. So lets go into props. Select the props tab. Select Add Item, inside this list you will find various objects that are used to personalize a lot, such as cars, swing sets, and trees. We are going to add a small pond to start off with. Open up the list and up in the top type "water hazard" to find the small pond. Place it wherever you like. Now, for trees type in "largepine" to find the pine trees, select them and place them in various spots on your lot, you can also get other types of trees by selecting the other types of trees that are in the same area as the pine trees in the list. If you scroll up a bit you will find some flowers, place those in there also. You are now almost done with your lot

6. Step 4 Flora

... Or plants to the normal person, are just like the trees that are in the props menu, but these grow, don't choose these unless you want the trees to grow which can take a while. The only thing that is in this menu is the tree.

7. Step 5 / Water or Land?

Notice that there are two tabs left. They are land and water; only select these if you are making something that extends outward into the water. You place the water tile where you want it to touch the water and place the land tiles where you want it to touch the land.

You finished product should be similar to this:

Mine may be a bit more detailed than yours does now. That's ok, just experiment with the Lot Editor, read through the prop list, and find out what's there. Soon, you too will be able to create wonderful looking lots.

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